


the words you say hold a thousand times more weight

by AuroraWest



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Naked Cuddling, New Asgard, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:41:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26795293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraWest/pseuds/AuroraWest
Summary: A lovely October day in New Asgard takes a turn, and Loki and Stephen get caught in the rain.
Relationships: Loki/Stephen Strange
Comments: 11
Kudos: 58





	the words you say hold a thousand times more weight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for tumblr's Hauntober prompts, Week 1: tea.

In some ways, Norway was the perfect climate for Loki. It rarely got uncomfortably hot—in fact, the temperature was in that pleasant zone where he was happiest, not scorching, but not too cold, either. Cold was preferable to heat, of course, but he still didn’t enjoy freezing his arse off. It snowed in the winter, but only often enough to be pretty, not enough to be annoying or inconvenient. The long, dark months weren’t his favorite, but when the darkness got to him, he went to New York and asked Stephen if he wouldn’t mind reading whatever tome he was studying somewhere brighter and sunnier for a few hours.

There were few people in the galaxy that Loki could imagine would entertain this request, let alone seem to enjoy it. But Stephen always smiled and said something like, “Feeling a little low on vitamin D?” before choosing somewhere new, and usually in Earth’s southern hemisphere, for them to spend an afternoon.

But that wasn’t climate, and there were ways to bear the darkness. The nearly endless light in the summer, for one thing. Climate was different—if it was unbearable, he couldn’t live in a place. New York’s was unbearable. Loki had told Stephen he should move the Sanctum to New Asgard, obviously knowing full well this wasn’t how it worked.

But in lieu of that, Loki was trying to get Stephen to spend more time in New Asgard. The Sanctum was their default, because it was large and privacy was easy to come by. Privacy was…occasionally an issue in New Asgard. The home that Loki shared with Thor and his sister-in-law wasn’t particularly spacious and the walls weren’t what one might call ‘soundproof.’

But mainly it was the lack of space. If Loki and Stephen were sitting in the living room, Thor and Jane would almost certainly wander by at some point. They might even sit down. It was their house too, after all. And that wasn’t taking into account the fact that their fellow New Asgardians could and _would_ stop by any time they pleased. Korg was the worst offender but Brunnhilde was hardly better. People had questions for Thor, they had questions for Loki, questions for Jane. Stephen had joked that coming to New Asgard meant having to make small talk with half the town.

It wasn’t much of a joke, honestly.

But Loki loved New Asgard and he wanted Stephen to love it, too. Half a year into their relationship, Loki was determined to spend, if not an equal amount of time in New Asgard, at least _some_ of their time together there. And he’d talked up the weather to convince Stephen to come to Norway on this particular day. It was nice—bright and sunny, but not hot. It was the perfect day for a walk, which was exactly what they did, setting off along the cliffs, the fjord to one side, green pasture to the other. They had been so caught up in their conversation and each other that they’d walked farther than Loki had initially planned on, all the way to the next village down the coast, which was a good six miles.

It wasn’t until halfway back to New Asgard that dark storm clouds began massing on the horizon.

Loki wrinkled his nose. “So much for the nice day,” he sighed. “We may have to cut this walk short, unless you enjoy being rained on.” But Stephen looked at him with the kind of regrettable _oh shit_ expression that was really more Loki’s style than Stephen’s. “What?” Loki asked.

Stephen glanced at the clouds, then back to Loki. “I left my sling ring in your bedroom.”

“You _what?_ ”

“I thought I should, you know, make time for us.” There was an Infinity Stone related joke there, but Loki remained silent. “I wanted to remove the temptation to check on stuff while we’re together. Things seem to keep…” Stephen hesitated. “Coming up.”

This was true. Last week it had been demons running a money laundering operation in the Bronx, which really had seemed like a Spider-Man issue. When Loki had said so, Stephen had reminded him that Spider-Man took care of Brooklyn, not the Bronx. Loki had rolled his eyes and said they were in the same city, what was the problem? And Stephen had stared at him, his jaw hinging and unhinging as if Loki had just said something unspeakable, before replying, “It’s like three transfers. You’d have to take the _bus_.”

The week before that, it had been what Stephen had described as, “Like a magical sewer leak—don’t ask; trust me.” He was the Sorcerer Supreme and the Guardian of the New York Sanctum and this meant he was always, as he said, on the clock. Loki didn’t complain. After all, he’d known full well what he was signing himself up for when the two of them had gotten involved. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t responsible for his own fair share of last-minute cancellations.

There was something sweet about the fact that Stephen had taken it upon himself to try to mitigate this issue. It was just unfortunate he’d chosen to do so at a time when they were going to have to walk several miles in the rain.

Loki ran his fingers through his hair, thinning his lips. “I suppose you’d better walk faster, then,” he said. They were already walking fast. ‘Walking faster’ at this point would be running. Loki could probably jog three miles. It was doubtful that Stephen could. Anyway—he glanced to his right—a misstep could result in both of them tumbling over the edge of the cliff and onto the rocks below. Again, this was something that Loki could probably take, though he’d likely break a number of bones. Stephen…not so much. The Cloak of Levitation hadn’t been invited on their walk.

As the first fat raindrops splattered down into the grass, still bright green in October, Stephen spun his hands and called up a slowly rotating shield of magic. He pulled his hands wider and the shield grew larger, stretching thinner and thinner, like gossamer, until Loki seemed to be staring up at the sky through a pane of golden glass no thicker than a strand of hair. Rain fell on it, running down the sides and dripping off the edges, which were safely distant from them by a foot or two.

Stephen looked smug and Loki drawled, his eyebrows flat, “My hero.”

Unfortunately, Stephen had failed to account for the wind. By the time he’d realized his mistake, they were drenched.

When they trudged back through the front door of the Odinson/Foster residence, they were completely sodden. All traces of the lovely day had been well and truly drowned by the cold, pouring rain, and Loki’s good mood was _almost_ as soggy. The house was quiet and neither Thor nor Jane were anywhere to be seen. Small blessings. Not that Loki didn’t want to see his brother and sister-in-law, but at the minute, his chief desire was to snarl at someone, and it would almost certainly be the first person who dared to speak to him.

The expression on Stephen’s face suggested he was well aware of this, and he just smiled a little before twirling a finger. A blast of warm air hit Loki and instantly, his clothes were dry. Stiff, but dry. And of course, it did nothing for the fact that he was chilled to the bone.

A smile was still twitching at Stephen’s mouth. “You know, the _one_ problem with magic is sometimes it makes things too easy.”

With a snort, Loki asked, “Oh?”

“Yeah. Anyone else would have had to strip out of those wet clothes.” One of Stephen’s eyebrows quirked up. “And seeing as we apparently have the house to ourselves, maybe we wouldn’t have bothered getting dressed again.”

The sourness of Loki’s mood became a bit less curdled. With a faint smile, he asked, “Do you want some tea?”

“I’d love some tea.”

And the warmth in Stephen’s voice improved Loki’s mood a little more. How could he stay unhappy when Stephen was looking at him like that? His smile growing firmer, Loki went to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Either of them could have done this with magic, but Stephen had a point. Magic sometimes made things too easy, when there was comfort in rituals. Boiling the water, steeping the tea. Getting undressed and curling up naked under a blanket.

The tea didn’t take long, and once it was ready, Loki carried the two steaming mugs to the porch, where there was a futon that had seen better days and, handily, a blanket bunched on one side of it. Loki set the tea down on the table in front of the futon and looked at the glass that Thor and he had recently put up over the porch’s screened windows. Rain ran in rivulets down the panes, making it impossible to see out. Or in.

With a sly smile, Loki crooked a finger at Stephen, who approached. Tossing the blanket to him, Loki said, “Here—hold this.”

“Why?” Stephen asked half a second before every stitch of clothing he was wearing vanished. He gave Loki a nonplussed look and immediately draped the blanket over his shoulders, saying, “You know, I can do that trick, too.”

“No need,” Loki said, plopping down on the futon. When Stephen followed suit, sitting down next to him, the blanket draping him like a toga, Loki pulled the blanket over himself, vanished his own clothes, and leaned into Stephen’s side. One of Stephen’s arms went around him.

As Stephen turned his face to kiss the side of Loki’s head, he pointed out, “We didn’t actually have to take the clothes off. They were already dry.”

“Drink your tea, Stephen,” Loki said, smiling slightly. One of Stephen’s hands slid across his chest, possibly en route to the mug, possibly not.

It was, as it turned out, though not without a detour or two—first up to Loki’s face, which Stephen turned towards his own so he could kiss Loki slowly, then down Loki’s body again, over his chest and stomach until it came to rest between his legs. And Loki returned the favor, holding the blanket tight around them while they kissed and took advantage of their lack of clothes, Stephen’s face buried in the crook of Loki’s neck as he mumbled his name, Loki’s eyes closed as he held Stephen close and felt his whole body turn to gold, or possibly light.

Their tea was cool enough to drink by the time they were done, in any case. The rain was pounding harder against the glass, and Loki sprawled against Stephen, warming his fingers on his mug, since they were already getting cold again without the benefit of—ahem—something _else_ to wrap them around.

He hadn’t filled Stephen’s mug as full, so once Stephen bolted his down, Loki offered his half-drunk tea. Stephen looked at him like he knew exactly what Loki was doing, but he took a sip with a wry smile. “Is October always this nice in New Asgard?” Stephen asked.

“It _was_ nice four hours ago,” Loki pointed out. “I’d blame Thor, to be honest, but there’s no thunder.”

“Wait, you’re _not_ going to blame Thor for something?” Stephen asked, smiling crookedly. “Are you feeling alright?”

Wrinkling his nose, Loki replied, “No. I’ve been going soft for a long time, and this is only the latest in a long line of unfortunate nods to a terminal case of sentimentality.”

With a chuckle, Stephen said, “Yeah. It’s a killer, that one.” His hand slipped over Loki’s heart, and Loki covered it with his own palm, holding it there.

The two of them remained that way, the blanket wrapped around both of them, listening to the rain patter on the windows and the roof, long after both their mugs were empty. Darkness began to fall outside, brought on earlier by the storm. Admittedly, this wasn’t the type of weather Loki normally enjoyed. It was gloomy, it was damp, it had a depressing, dreary element to it that he could do without. But if it meant—well, _this_ , and what he was doing now, skin on skin, limbs languidly intertwined, no need to be anywhere but exactly where they were—then he could see a certain value in it.

Loki straightened up, but only so he could lean forward, an arm sliding to rest on Stephen’s shoulder, to kiss him softly. They probably needed more tea.

Fingers tangled in his hair as their kiss grew deeper.

The tea could wait.


End file.
